Renewing my Indian ness

I have stayed for 4 years in North America and have just recently returned to India. Before going to Canada I had only read, heard or seen on TV about the Western world. It’s comforts, advanced society, technology, cars, roads etc were something we could only dream about. India was slowly catching up with the West they used to say. Especially in the metros. We are getting all the latest electronic items, consumer products like Coke, Nestle chocolates. The latest cars are being sold in India including Mercedes Maybach, BMW and even Rolls Royce.
There are so many flyovers being built in Mumbai, The roads are being concretised, the Mumbai Pune Expressway is like any US freeway…… and so on and so forth.
So it was a bit of optimism that I went to Canada thinking that (and I had expressed the same to a cousin of mine who had been there for almost 10 years) Bombay if not India would very soon be as modern and as efficient a place to stay in as say LA, New York or Toronto.
When I landed in Toronto the first thing that caught my eye was the impressive glass and steel airport, with moving walkways, escalators and efficient immigration and customs officials.
Once outside the airport in the taxi cab, the highways , the different cars and lane discipline on the road enamoured me. Everybody driving cars in the designated lanes, lane changing done after giving a signal and actually waiting for the driver in that lane to give you space and drivers actually giving space to incoming cars!!!

On coming back to India after 4 years, I realized that things haven’t really improved all that much. Its just got more crowded and the infrastructure (which I had seen starting to develop to take care of growth ) had really not kept up pace with the actual growth.

The roads were still inadequate to cope up with the traffic. This probably had led to more indiscipline on the road as now there were more people fighting for the same space on the road. As a result traffic in Mumbai which used to be reasonably disciplined was deteriorating to the levels of the rest of India where traffic lights were taken as an advisory and not as a rule to be obeyed. Traffic cops were treated with barely any respect. Pedestrians, two wheelers, rickshaws behaved as if it was the duty of the other residents of the road to look out for them and not their own.

While driving on the road one day (or rather while stuck in a traffic jam one day) a thought suddenly struck me.

All our life from childhood to adult hood we have been reinforced with one single idea about the Great Indian Culture. That is respect for others. I remember Raj Kapoor in one of his memorable films says to another character (who is conveniently Westernized) that the Indian Culture is so great and so respectful, humble and welcoming that even when we refuse to give alms to a beggar on the street we say ‘Maaf Karo’ or “Forgive me for I cannot give you any money”. That struck me as a very strong statement about India and made me feel good. Especially when this was juxtaposed against the callous Western attitudes where everybody was running behind money, there was no compassion etc.

However on staying in the West and after coming back I realized that this was not all true.
In the west there is definitely a value attached to every human being. This value does not depend upon the amount of money that person earns or his education. Its value because he is a human being. Everybody treats everybody with respect (except for US Border Security personnel!!!! They show respect for nobody and are as rude as you can possibly get.)

People say thank you to the Bus Driver while getting off a public transport bus. People say good morning or good evening to the Security Guard at the gate of the office or apartment complex. Some people even say Good Morning to perfect strangers if you are out on a morning walk and pass by their gardens.

This is something I have never seen happen in India. We generally tend to ignore all those below us in the social strata. When was the last time you remember saying Thank You to a rickshaw, taxi or bus driver? When did you last say Good Morning to the Security Guard at the gate of your building or office?

When was the last time we ever said THANK YOU????